A problem S’pore & China share

In an image entitled Live At The High Place, the photographer and performance artist Li Wei stands at the base of an inverted human pyramid in front of the Sanlitun Village shopping centre in Beijing. On his shoulders are balanced four people; on theirs, six more. The human sculpture portrays the impact of China’s one-child policy – as a generation of only children, now adults, contemplate looking after increasing numbers of older relatives. BBC report

In S’pore it was a two-child policy and “babies are for graduate mums only” (OK I exaggerate on the latter, but you know what I mean) but the effect is still the same.

To solve this goof-up, the government then introduced the FT policy, except that FTs turned out in many cases to be Foreign Trash (they are veerry cheap) rather than the Foreign Talents. Now we are waiting to see how this FT balls-up will be solved. What with Tharman supervising the manpower ministry, I am reasonably optimistic something will be done that will satisfy the people. Especially since at least 40% of the voters are angry with the FT policy in its present form.

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Actually, the history of our tiny island state is replete with goof ups. The first thing that comes to mind would be the idea that gripped LKY in the 1980’s that fast tracking scholars through the system to become policy makers is a good thing. In the end, he had to distort the entire political system to accommodate these people who have the motivational ability of a thimble.

Then you have all the holes dugged by the scholar ministers throughout their careers, for example, the non-sustainable “asset appreciation” concept introduced during GCT’s time, Tony Tan’s tweaking of our education system which was already stratified during Goh Keng Swee’s time, etc.

It is only now many of these boos-boos are coming back to bite them and Singapore in the ass. Warren Buffett’s tide analogy definitely applies to us.

The goof-up in the two-is-enough policy is unofficially irreversible. Nobody dares say it or print it, but the mere fact that they have to resort to importing of FTs is a quiet admission that they have given up hope. At 1.16 TRF, experts term it as irreversible, so I’m just waiting to see how CSS is going to address that..I mean, do you see PM throwing any more baby incentives? nope., he said so the plans have failed. And we have not heard a single word about it since. So unofficially they have given up hope. They don’t even “try” to do anything ..the FT is a FACT and REALITY. The question is, do we as a nation feel that the family policy has gone far and deep enough. Or the state had merely tried to simply throw more money to solve the “symptoms” instead of a major haul and attack the root causes instead. My guess is the former.